11/14/2008

Belkin and Verizon DSL Annoyance Fixed!

I spent several days trying to solve a Belkin annoyance, and found numerous geeky help forums with sometimes elaborate prescriptions for assistance, that people kept finding didn't work.

I kept contacting Belkin by email (where they are more stupid) and by IM live (where they are very delayed and distracted) but finally I got a recipe that worked.

Not before being told elaborate solutions like taking a paper clip and poking it into the router to reset the addresses and following numerous screens, or by seeing geek-to-go help forums prescribing elaborate changes or resetting or generation of the MAC address, etc.

If you call Verizon DSL, they will tell you to call Belkin. If you call Belkin, they don't tell you to call Verizon, mercifully, but they tell you completely extraneous stuff. They may be running bots. If you say the phrase "pop-up" as I did in my help request, "The Verizon DSL connection menu keeps popping up," then I get a recipe about how to get rid of pop-up ads. If I say I can't get out of a menu routine, I get back a response about fixing Parental Controls. That's why I gave up on the email help, and got the person online.

Here's the story. After you connect the Belkin G Wireless Router to your main computer running on Verizon DSL with a Westell WireSpeed modem, and then have a second computer access that wireless network you've just established, even while both computers are perfectly well connected, the main computer keeps popping up a "connection to broadband" menu. If you click through it, it generates error messages about not reaching the remote, but in fact since you're already connected, it doesn't matter. It seems impossible to make this thing go away (resetting doesn't work) because each time you open a new email or move to another page, it comes up again.

So here's the solution!

1. Click on START and go to CONTROL PANEL
2. Select NETWORK AND SHARING
3. Select INTERNET OPTIONS
4. Go to the tab CONNECTIONS and make sure the button on is NEVER DIAL A CONNECTION
5. Select LAN SETTINGS and make sure NO boxes are checked off, i.e. are left empty
6. Click OK and OK again to save.